Your story ideas

Brown, Latasha

My three story ideas for this week did not come easy. However after I did some reading and

thought of them as a short story I came up with the follow:

1. I would like to follow a teenage mother. I know that this story has been told time and

time again. However I think there are rare teenage mothers out there. Young ones that

keep pushing towards their education, earn money the honest way, and have plans to go

to college and better themselves. I guess the big question would be how do they balance

it out and how do they deal with the challenges that they face as a teenage mother.

2. I would like to walk down the Delmar Loop and interview one of the people who are out

there with their act. I would like to get to know them and ask them with drives them to do

what they do and what else is it that they do. Who knows I just might find a great story.

3. Follow up on Kwaume. Better yet finish the story. Spend a few hours with him on the

outside. Explore if his mind frame outside of prison walls. The question is did prison

change him? She who he reaches out to upon getting home. Where will he go? Things

like that. In a nutshell give my reader a middle and an ending to my story.

4. A narrative introducing a person with a great idea. In doing so I would go around to

events in the city and listen to what the people say and put it all together. I know it may

seem crazy but I will explain my view. A place like “Open Mic Night”. I can paint a

picture of my surroundings and use the surrounding I am in to build detail and charcther

around my mine focus of the narriative. Such as the “pop, pop, pop of the heart” in the

story in our readings this week.
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Amanda

I don’t have any really strong leads, but these are my three ideas I could dig into.

1.        St. Louis is one of America’s refugee cities. The State Department gives refugees a 3 month living stipend, and then they are on their own.  I’d like to interview an Iraqi family who came to America as refugees.  I could either describe the events that led up to them fleeing their country, or I could focus on their lives now and how they’ve struggled to make a life in a country that they never planned on coming to.  They live in South City, where there are a lot of Middle Eastern grocery stores.  They visit a masjid, and I wonder if they like it or if they think it’s a sad replacement of what they were used to in Iraq.  I suppose the conflict would be internal: coming to accept their new lives in America, finding peace about it.

2.       A similar but different story:  I recently met the people who run Oasis International, a charity that helps refugees in St. Louis.  I could interview some of their volunteers about the work they do.  I could watch their ESL classes, computer classes, sewing classes, or hang out in their office for a day and see how it works, how they meet refugees and offer them help. 

3.       WashU has a Bahkti yoga club that meets weekly to meditate, do yoga, and discuss the benefits of ancient Indian spirituality.  I’m curious if the students in this group do this for fun, or if there is a student who practices these customs regularly and seriously, and what they feel like the effects are on their lives.  And if not a student, I assume the leader/teacher of the group does.  I emailed this student group, but I haven’t heard back from them.  Though I could show up to their Friday evening meeting for some yoga and curry and introduce myself, ask some questions, and hone in on one person.

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